“Why should I help you?” I try to sound tough, the way my little sister always did when she came nose-to-nose with the province bullies.
But the boy isn’t a bully. He’s weighing my question again, his hand curling tighter around the shell’s coils.
“I can get you out.” His words howl through the glass, prickle my skin like an old sage’s prophecy. Tempting and haunting, but somehow impossible. Out. Outside. Under stars and rain. Over dirt. Beyond these walls.
There is no escape. There is no escape. There is no escape.
Or is there?
In this moment, staring at this shell, anything seems possible.
“They meet here twice a week. Every three or four days,” I tell him. I’m not sure which days. All of them run together here because we’re always working. “There’s about ten of them.”
“And their names? "
“I don’t know. If I decide to tell you, it’s going to take me a while to get into one of their meetings.”
His face is all frown. Even still, he looks handsome. “I don’t have much time. I’ll give you four days.”
Four. He says the number with an expression that makes it look as if someone is prying his fingernail off. I feel the same way, but for a different reason. Four days. That’s nothing. Mama-san could keep my door locked for months. Any promise I might make comes up dry. It’s just as well. They’d be spoken out of thrill, out of nautilus dreams. “I’ll… try…”
“I hope you do,” he says, and lets go of the seashell. It almost doesn’t fit on the edge of the concrete, but the boy balanced it well. It’s there to stay, less than an inch from the glass. If the window were shattered, I could reach out and touch it.
“If it isn’t safe, I’ll put a flower in the window.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Wait—" I call out, but the boy hasn’t moved. He’s still just beyond the glass, a fingertip away. “I told you about when the meetings are. Tell me something. Please.”
The boy’s eyes drift down to the shell, remind me that he doesn’t owe me anything. Not even something. But his words — he can’t know how I’ve held on to them — how I’ve spent hours imagining Mr. Lau bent over a bucket of spoiled shrimp. Peeling their skins off with hands of practice and calluses.
I need more.
“I watched the sun rise yesterday,” he tells me. “I’ve had insomnia for two years, and it was the first time I’d ever thought about going up and watching the daybreak.”
“What was it like?” My voice is eager — hungry for colors and light and everything I don’t have. Everything this boy has seen.
But he doesn’t tell me about how the pink of the sun spread like afterglow on the cheeks of the sky. Or how the clouds chorused brighter than he could stand.
“Beautiful,” he says instead, his voice hesitant and hazy. “Sad. It made me wish I were somewhere else. Someone else.”
I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t. He’s given me everything he can.
“I think everyone wishes that,” I tell him. I know I do.
He’s still looking at the shell. The edges of his mouth screw tight. And I just want him to smile. To let the years and strain and weary insomniac nights he gathers inside fall away.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I offer. “I’m glad you’re you.”
His lips twist more. It’s not a smile, but not a grimace, either. “I have to go. I’ll be back in four days.”
He turns. I let the tapestry down and look at the vase standing guard by the door like a lone soldier. Its flowers are shriveled, fighting off death’s brown edges.
I should start watering them.
DAI
I don’t leave right away. I didn’t really have to go, just needed to get away from so many dangerous feelings, bull’s-eye words. Instead, I stand and stare at the shell. It’s a flawless thing. Almost too perfect. When I was younger and the summer days grew too long, my mother and Emiyo used to take us walking along the seashore to look for shells. My plastic pail was always filled to the brim with chipped oysters and hollowed-out crab carcasses. Things Emiyo always chucked in the garbage when we got home.
I never found anything as perfect and whole as this.
It makes me wonder where Tsang got it. He doesn’t strike me as the walk along the seashore with your pants rolled up searching for treasures of the sea type. Besides, I’m not even sure nautiluses live around here. (My brother would’ve known. It would be an encyclopedia factoid he gleaned from his I love dolphins and want to be a marine biologist phase.) Tsang probably bought it from the gift shop at Seng Ngoi’s Grand Aquarium or from a grungy stall at the night market.
Most likely it was made in a factory with chemicals and synthetics. It’s probably not even a real shell at all. As glamorous and hollowed-out and fake as me and my promises.
My stomach churns, and for just a minute I want to rap on the window again. I want to look through the lattice and tell the girl it’s all a mistake. I can’t promise her freedom. I can’t even free myself.
But I don’t. Maybe it’s because I think I really can pull this off. That against all the odds, all of Longwai’s men and their guns, I can get the girl out. Fill the emptiness of her eyes. Of my own echoed stare.
Beautiful. Sad. It made me wish I were somewhere else. Someone else.
Was I talking about watching sunrises or seeing her? I’m not so sure.
Whatever the subject matter, it was the truth.
So is this: I’m not a good person. I’m a selfish bastard, needing and taking, leaving her behind with nothing but trinkets. Just like Osamu.
I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re you.
Salt words rubbed in a wound. Stinging like a few dozen obscenities strung together. If the girl has any sense at all, she’ll forget about the names. Forget about me. And a small part of me — the same hint of Dai that wishes we’d met in a completely different life, the pieces of Dai the window doesn’t reflect — hopes she does.
I shove my hands into my pockets, where they twitch and tap and curl into fists. I walk away.
13 days
JIN LING
My next few runs are smooth work. There aren’t so many shadows in City Beyond, but I’m learning that the same tactics work there. Make no noise. Walk with your shoulders hunched. Keep to the sides of buildings. Do all this and no one will notice you. Not even the police who circle the Walled City. Vultures with handcuffs and guns.
I haven’t seen Yin Yu again. There are other girls: faces trapped in makeup and forced smiles. Every time one of them walks into the lounge, my heart jolts. Every time, I think it’s Mei Yee. Every time, I look and realize it’s another nameless girl. Another not her.
Every time, I look. Every time, I hope. I won’t stop until I find my sister.
Chma greets me before I reach our alley, my belly still warm and full of the pumpkin porridge Dai bought. I think it’s strange that he’s so free with his money, but he doesn’t seem to mind. We haven’t been back to the rooftop. After every run, he takes me somewhere new. Today we sat across from Mrs. Pak’s storefront. Watching her beat rice noodles into long, thin strands; teaching her daughter to do the same. We ate in silence and dark, positioned just right so we could see pieces of a cartoon program flickering through a family’s window: a cat and a mouse chasing each other. The cat was a terrible hunter. Not like Chma. He let the mouse run between his legs, skip across his back. The kids inside giggled, pointing at the screen and munching on a plate of rice cakes. I couldn’t laugh with them. I kept imagining how hungry the cat was. How quickly he would fade in real life.